You duck your head and walk away quickly, hoping he hasn’t recognised you. Then you hide behind a parked car and watch.
Qasim stalks once around the building, then stands outside the front, looking up at it. Suddenly, you see what has caught his eye: the back of a red hijab just near one of the first-floor windows.
Qasim moves until he is directly beneath that window. He slips his backpack down and hides it behind a rubbish bin right under Rahama’s window. Then he walks away from the building. He looks neither left nor right. He doesn’t hurry. He just slips one hand inside his pocket and walks away, like a man who knows exactly what he’s doing.
You can only guess that Rahama’s about to start broadcasting your interview with Zayd. You can only guess why someone might deliberately leave a backpack by the broadcasting building right before a major story comes out. Both of those guesses lead to a terrible conclusion.
You run to where the backpack is hidden and, with sweating hands, carefully tug the zip open.
What you see makes your stomach flip: three used Coke cans, held together with black electrical tape; some looping yellow and red wires; and a battery and phone, also strapped on with more tape.
It’s a homemade bomb. When Qasim calls the number of the phone that’s attached to it, he will trigger a massive explosion.
Your blood thumps in your ears. You want to flee, but you force yourself to breathe and look at the bomb. Your friend Mahadi’s family has an electronic repairs shop, so you’ve seen the inside workings of lots of gadgets before.
This bomb is less complicated than your average toaster. You can see the wires going into the power source. If you lift the tape and unhook those wires then there will be no charge, so the phone call won’t work – the bomb won’t explode. Easy. Except that if you’re wrong … you’re dead.
You could get away instead and try to warn Rahama – but would she hear you and get out of the building in time? And what if Qasim is still somewhere nearby, hears your shout, and comes after you?
You have only seconds to decide.
To try to defuse the bomb, go to scene 4.
To try to raise the alarm from a distance, turn to scene 7.
To read a fact file on journalists at risk click here, then return to this page to make your choice.
You use your nail to lift a corner of the tape that binds the bomb together. You know you can defuse it. You just hope you can do it fast enough.
Sweat is making your hands slip on the plastic tape, so you wipe them on your shorts. Then you peel back the tape again, trying to move as steadily and quickly as you can, because if Qasim calls the phone before you get those wires off the bomb, both you and Rahama – not to mention everyone else who happens to be nearby – will die.
The tape is tacky, gluey – your fingers are sticking to it. You ball it up to get it out of the way, then give one more little tug and see the wires connecting to the battery. Yes.
You are praying under your breath, verses from the Qur’an, to help steady you and guide you as you begin to untwist the wires, when – slam!
You are knocked sideways onto the ground, but not by a bomb blast. Qasim has found you. His knees are on your chest. You feel your ribs bending to cracking point under the pressure. Qasim leans over you. The whites of his eyes are yellow.
‘I know you,’ he says slowly. ‘Rahama’s nephew. Trying to play the hero, huh?’
He spits in your face. The warm liquid trickles over your cheek and into one ear. You twist your head uselessly.
Qasim lifts a phone out of his pocket. You think that he’s going to ring the number of the phone strapped to the bomb, and you pray you got the wires loose enough in time, but instead, he speaks into it.
‘I have someone useful here. The target’s nephew.’
Allah, save me, you think. You don’t want to be useful to al-Shabaab. You want to be no one to them.
You struggle under Qasim’s knees until two men come and throw you into the back of a white van.
They lean into the van and use black electrical tape to strap your wrists together behind your neck, then your ankles together. Then they loop rope behind you between your wrists and ankles and tighten it, pulling you back like a bow ready to fire.
The van roars off. Every jolt of the road sends shooting pains through your limbs. The plastic floor of the van, now slick with your sweat, knocks against your head as the shadows of buildings flicker past. You think of Jamilah waiting at home for you, and tears start sliding into your ear. You think of Rahama, and your heart pounds even harder with hot, useless panic.
You feel something digging into your thigh through your pocket. It’s the golden pen. You’d forgotten you had it. It’s the very thing that al-Shabaab is trying to kill Rahama for, and it’s in your pocket.
Just then, you hear a boom. The van is still close enough that it seems to bounce as the blast wave hits. The air fills with screams, and with the grinding, crunching sound of a building collapsing.
Rahama.
The driver revs the van harder. There is a riot of honking, and panicked faces flash past the windows.
Hate bubbles up in you like vomit. ‘You scum!’ you scream. ‘You bastards! I’ll kill you!’
One of your captors turns around, tips down his sunglasses, looks at you and snorts.
The other one, driving the van, chuckles. ‘The little cockroach is angry,’ he mocks.
‘Because we killed his Aunty Cockroach,’ teases the man with the sunglasses in a singsong voice.
‘I think there’s a baby sister cockroach, too … isn’t there? The small ones are easy to squash,’ muses the driver.
You thrash and fight like a fish on a hook. You scream until your throat feels rough and dry, even though Sunglasses presses a gun to your head and tells you to shut up. You use every swear word you know.
Your limbs are burning, your muscles tearing from straining so hard against the ropes. The anger burning you up is stronger than the sun. You can feel it curling your insides like they’re paper on a fire. When the van eventually stops, you are ready to attack the first person who comes near you.
You hope that, if today is your day to die, it will happen quickly.
Instead, when the van door rolls open, a white-bearded man leans over you in gentle concern.
‘Oh, dear, look at this poor boy. You’ve been too rough with him,’ he chides as the two kidnappers slope off.
Through the van door, you see that you’re in an unfamiliar suburb of Mogadishu, on a quiet, dusty street. The kidnappers disappear inside a white house with its windows boarded over.
White Beard sets a can of lemon soda on the floor of the van, just near your head. You can see the dew beading on the shiny can. In spite of yourself, your mouth waters.
‘I do apologise,’ White Beard says, and he carefully cuts your ropes. His voice is mellow and sincere. ‘I explained that you are not our enemy, but it seems they overdid it. Are you all right?’
He helps you to sit, and raises the soda to your lips. It is sweet, bubbly heaven in your mouth. He uses the sleeve of his white cotton shirt to wipe your brow.
‘Please come inside.’
The driver of the van bows to White Beard as he shepherds you inside. Your mind reels.
White Beard seems to be the leader of this terrorist cell, so he must have planned the bomb that killed Aunty Rahama – yet he seems so kind and steady, like the grandpa you never knew. Is he softening you up for torture? Or is this situation somehow not what you think it is?
White Beard shows you into a room. There is a single bare mattress on the floor, a fluorescent light bulb and no windows. The walls are apple-green. One wall has a black-and-gold-framed hanging of Arabic calligraphy. Your Arabic isn’t as fluent as your Somali, and the calligraphy is ornate, but you can make it out: ‘There is no power and no strength except with Allah.’
‘You killed Aunty Rahama,’ you croak. You mean it to sound like an accusation, but it comes out like
a bleat, a question.
Power and strength with Allah, you remind yourself. Toughen up and stay smart!
But hot tears spring to your eyes as White Beard sits beside you on the mattress and puts his arm around your shoulders.
‘Poor boy, I know the grief must be terrible for you at this moment,’ he murmurs. ‘But in time, we hope that you will come to understand that Allah has a greater purpose for you – that He can give you light and guidance when you follow His path.’
‘I know what Allah’s path for me is,’ you say, strength returning to your voice. ‘It’s to become a journalist like my aunty, and to—’
You stop short. You almost said to investigate Bright Dream, but of course you don’t want to give away that you know anything about that.
‘To help Somalia be free,’ you finish uncertainly.
‘You will only know true freedom when you learn to obey Allah’s law,’ murmurs White Beard.
‘What law is that?’ you challenge him. ‘Because my aunty taught me the Qur’an inside out, and there isn’t anything there about killing people just because they’re saying something you don’t like.’
White Beard ignores your rising temper. ‘We want you to undertake our training and join al-Shabaab,’ he says. ‘For one so young, you have great courage and intelligence. We believe you have access to sources and information that will be of use to us.’
You feel Rahama’s golden pen pressing into your leg. Surely this is the information they’re looking for. They’d love to know about this copy of Rahama’s interview with Zayd, and the information you have about Bright Dream – even though that isn’t much yet. And if they think they can talk you into joining them, they will use you as a soldier in their war. You have to get out of here.
You must choose your next words carefully. You have something that you know they want very much. Perhaps you could use the pen as a bargaining chip – tell them you will give it to them if they’ll set you free.
Or perhaps you should keep it hidden, pretend to play along with their plans to undertake training, and look for a way to escape later.
To offer the pen in exchange for your freedom, go to scene 6.
To wait and look for a way to escape, go to scene 5.
I can’t give up the pen yet, you tell yourself. I’m sure I can find another way to escape.
You turn to White Beard and say, ‘All right. If you think it’s Allah’s will, then I’ll stay. I hope I can be useful to you, sir.’
You even make a little bow, hoping you aren’t overdoing it, but White Beard seems pleased.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Very good. I’ll get the men to bring you some dinner.’
He rises and leaves the room. You hear a click as he locks the door behind him.
Hours later, your two kidnappers bring you a plate of goat stew and rice.
‘Can I use the bathroom, please?’ you ask.
You’re hoping to get out of your room, see more of the house and look for a way to escape. Perhaps you’ll even be able to break out of the bathroom. But instead, they bring you a bucket.
‘Use that,’ the driver says and throws it at you. The door locks again.
You think while you eat the spicy, meaty stew. What can you use to help you? You have a plate, but no cutlery – you’re eating with your fingers, like usual. You have a bucket, a mattress, the picture on the wall and, of course, your secret pen.
You have an idea! You use the sharp nib of the pen to stab a little crack into the bottom of the bucket. Then you gobble the rest of your meal and wee into the bucket. As you’d hoped, it starts leaking. Then, for good and stinky measure, you stick your fingers down your throat and vomit into the bucket too. It’s a shame to chuck up that goat stew, but you want to make a really awful mess.
You shout at the top of your voice: ‘Help! The bucket’s leaking!’ Just before one of your captors comes to the door, you think to grab a handful of vomit and smear it over your chest. Then as the door opens, you cry out, ‘Oh, my stomach! It must have been that stew!’
Standing in the doorway, Sunglasses looks horror-struck. ‘Disgusting!’ he shouts. The room has a thick, rancid smell to it now, and he gags a little.
You push the bucket towards him and cry, ‘Please, take it to the toilet!’
He pushes it back at you angrily and shouts, ‘I’m not touching that! Take it to the toilet yourself – and wash yourself while you’re in there!’
The bathroom is tacked onto the side of the house, and luckily it has no ceiling at all – it’s a pit in the ground enclosed by concrete walls. You splash a little water onto your face and vomit-covered shirt. You’d better be quick, before they come and check on you.
By standing on the upside-down bucket, you’re tall enough to hook your fingers over the top of the wall and scrabble up. You sit astride the wall and scan the area. There’s a stray dog lurking below, but no other signs of life. How will you keep that dog distracted? You can’t have it barking and alerting everyone.
You scramble back down into the bathroom, lift up the overturned bucket, and grab a handful of your vomit from the ground beneath it, feeling nauseous. This is so disgusting that it just might work.
Using only one hand, you scramble back up the wall; then you toss the sloppy handful of vomit down to the ground. The dog runs over and starts gobbling it up as if it’s the yummiest thing it’s seen all week. Regurgitated goat. You shudder and wipe your hand on your shorts, and then you leap.
Your feet pound the ground. You wait for the shouts of your captors, but all you can hear are cats fighting, the muffled cry of a cranky baby inside a nearby house, and your own urgent, rhythmic breaths. You run as hard as you can, picking directions at random, just trying to put distance between you and the al-Shabaab house.
Unwanted images flash through your mind. The bomb inside the backpack. Qasim’s face as he spat on you. The red hijab at the window.
You begin to stumble. Running so fast right after you’ve vomited is making you feel wobbly. You slow to a jog, keeping to the shadows, looking for a landmark you recognise. It is a moonlit night. The buildings tower over you like craggy cliffs. Every building is riddled with bullet holes, which tonight look like black shadowy pits on the buildings’ ghostly faces.
I’ll be leaving you soon, Mogadishu, you think. You don’t know how, but you’ll have to take Jamilah and go somewhere else – somewhere you can’t be found. You’re broken and dangerous, you think, but I’ll still miss you.
This city is the only home you’ve ever known. You’ll miss the colourful displays of fruit in the grocery shop at the front of your house; the orange curtains and the rumble of the ocean. You’ll miss the minarets of the beautiful mosques, which poke the skyline, and the singsong call to prayer that rings from them five times a day.
You wish that you’d seen Mogadishu in its glory days, long before the civil war began, when it was one of the most profitable and cosmopolitan trading ports in the world.
People flocked here to buy and sell cloth, spices, paper from Egypt and gold from Sudan, says Rahama’s voice, the echo of a memory. Sailing ships plied the harbour, and every night was filled with feasting and music.
You stop. You can hear your breath heaving in and out, but there is a second rhythm behind it – the crashing breath of the ocean. Waves!
You follow the sound, and there, silhouetted against the silver sea, is the ruined theatre. You know where you are! With a new burst of energy, you sprint the rest of the way home.
To read a fact file on religious extremism click here, then go to scene 10 to continue with the story.
To continue with the story now, go to scene 10.
Rahama wouldn’t have wanted me to give away the pen, you think uneasily.
But then a firmer voice in your mind says: She would have wanted you to stay alive – and this is a way you can do that.
You bring the pen out of your pocket, and White Beard watches without a word as you unscrew it to reveal the m
emory stick.
You glance at his face. There’s a light behind his eyes, and a pleased smile plays about his lips, as if he suspected you might have something like this and can only just restrain himself from grabbing it out of your hand.
‘This is the only copy of the interview with Zayd,’ you say. ‘I’ll give it to you in exchange for my freedom.’
‘Well …’ White Beard seems almost amused now. ‘What a treasure. We were indeed hoping that you might be able to give us something like this. And of course it is worth your freedom … if it contains what you say it does. I’ll have to take it from you to check.’
He holds his hand out for the pen, and you start to question whether you’ve done the right thing.
If I refuse to give it to him, though, you think, won’t he just take it by force?
You’re starting to feel a little foolish. But he did say it was worth your freedom. You have to hope that this deal will go through. So you hand him the pen.
He leaves the room, and you spend ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes chewing your fingernails. Just when you think it’s a lost cause, White Beard comes back.
‘Very good,’ he says. ‘That story was exactly what we needed. Now, your little sister must be worried about you – you’d better be getting along home.’
He holds the door to your room wide open.
‘Really?’ you ask disbelievingly.
‘Oh, yes. I’m sorry to have kept you. Off you go.’ You walk out of the room, full of nerves, a flood of hope rising inside you. From the hallway, you see the two men who kidnapped you, one either side of the doorway. The door is wide open, but the expressions on the men’s faces do not look kind. There is a dreadful curdling feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Run! shouts the voice in your mind, and you begin to sprint for the open doorway. But the two men tackle you, bringing you crashing to the ground, and White Beard steps over you and slams the door closed. The two men begin to punch you, as White Beard stands over you and gives you a lecture.
Touch the Sun Page 3